


Time Signatures

by PaopuNova



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 07:25:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7882084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaopuNova/pseuds/PaopuNova
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Axel is a painter who's completely smitten with his pianist neighbor. Its gay and embarassing.</p><p>The idea was that the beat and timing of the music would relate to the theme of "Time", but Im not sure how well it does this. For the Kh-worlds Connected Zine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time Signatures

Axel woke to the smell of turpentine and petrichor.

Sometime in the night he’d passed out beside his current endeavor, a canvas the length and span of his own body. The oil paints he’d been using the night before were still fresh on his palette, as oils always were, and somehow he knew he had streaks of turquoise across his cheek. Newspaper crinkled beneath him as he sat up. _Still in last night’s clothes, huh?_ It would have been laughable, but the occurrence was so common and natural to him he no longer let it bother him.

Axel stood and stretched. Around him his many works told him how obsessive his personality had become. Paintings, sculptures of clay and metal, and all manners of charcoal and graphite sketchings hung on the walls by little black tacks. The subjects were all random, but the passionate scrawl all clearly came from the same hand.

He checked his watch with a sigh, deciding that a shower would do him good. He didn't smell or anything, but the oil paints from last night had over-stayed their welcome, their kiss marks unwanted.  But just as he turned to leave the room he heard the faint sounds of voices across the alleyway. A window faced him, adjacent on the alleyway’s opposite building. He came closer and made out the distinct form of a man with long blue hair and an imposing scowl, directed at the four other men moving about in the room beyond the glass. They seemed to be movers of some sort, dressed in white jumpsuits and precariously balancing what seemed to be a…dark, mahogany piano? The supporting legs had been removed to let the main body through a door, but that didn’t make the whole ordeal appear any less awkward and difficult.

Axel didn’t recognize the tenant, so he assumed today was his move in. He _would_ have gone over to introduce himself, especially with how downright alluring the man’s face was, but he was sticky from the hot and humid evening before, and perhaps too sloppily dressed, to impress his new neighbor. So he resigned himself to just admiring him from his window sill for a few more moments, impressed with the man’s stiff expression, before tearing himself away to appreciate him more in his shower fantasies.

He received his chance later, when the evening rolled in and he needed to pick up his mail. The apartment complex had their shiny mailboxes all lined up neatly right outside the front door to the office, where anyone unfortunate enough to care for the spam newsletters, local discount sales, and Struggle Match flyers would be just about soaked to the bone from the onslaught of rain that Radiant Garden was frequently treated to. It had almost been a complete waste of time showering earlier, and of course he couldn’t find the right key to open his box.

By the time his fumbling hands managed their only task, the new tenant had arrived with a slick black umbrella that cast rain to the side and shadows over his handsome face. Axel became a bit dumbstruck by it, delighting in the light of the evening rainstorm reflecting in the man’s amber eyes, and the drops of water trailing slowly down the bridge of his nose.

The new tenant returned his blank stare with a sharp, uncomfortable frown. “Are you going to stand there all night – wasting my time, or do you think I could retrieve the paperwork out of my own box?”

Axel shifted immediately, leaving his keys dangling from his box while the rain continued to seep through his clothes. His neighbor reached past him and twisted his own shiny key in the little door of his mailbox, deftly retrieving a thin stack of papers from within. His errand now complete, the man turned away from him without another word, only pausing briefly to shake the rainwater off of his umbrella before disappearing back inside the lobby.

Axel, needless to say, was completely smitten – still as blown away a few minutes later as the first time he’d laid eyes on the man across the alleyway. His increasingly soaked clothing which was starting to weigh him down did eventually snap him out of his daze long enough for him to gather his own mail and head home. It certainly hadn’t been his most impressive first impression, but at least he hadn’t made an ass of himself…

It had taken no time at all for Axel’s mind to become fixated with his neighbor’s rigid, immobile expressions. His view of the man’s music room had left him on more than one occasion breathless, the dappled light of the summer rain gently falling on the pianist’s face. He lost himself simultaneously in the curve of cobalt eyelashes and full lips, that would often times curl into a small snarl, which Axel thought must have been because the movements of the man’s hands were not matching up with the music in his mind.

Not that Axel knew anything about that, but he did understand the feeling; the frustration of trying to make one’s artistic ideas become reality. His beautiful neighbor played the same piece so often over the next two weeks that Axel found himself humming along to it as he worked, his hands stroking his canvases in a smooth rhythm he had never thought to try before, enjoying himself with the measured touch that his brush strokes now brought to the life of his paintings.

But soon enough, he couldn’t find it in himself to paint any longer – at least, he couldn’t paint just _anything_. He had a wide selection of muses from the royal menagerie on eighth street to the freshwater eels running though Radiant Garden’s fat, silver rivers, but never in his career as an artist had he painted human subjects before. Now, Axel’s studio was quite literally littered with charcoal sketches of his new neighbor, drawn in a sharp rigid style to accompany the man’s usual look. His new muse led him to painting with his ears, letting the beat of the classical sound guide his hand in both color and style until he gained acute tendinitis.

Slowly but surely, his sketchbooks became as enamored with his neighbor as Axel was, finding in exploration the minute differences between one frown, to the next slightly more approving expression.  His best pieces joined his carrying portfolio, a flat file tied once by a string on each side of the folder. Axel regrettably wished to add a smiling image to his portfolio, but it seemed that his alley-mate would refuse to be satisfied with himself long enough for Axel to even catch a glimpse of what that might look like. Still, Axel could barely find fault in him.

-0-0-0-

 

Axel next saw his muse by quite literally crashing into him. In a rush, late for a meeting with the local museum director, he’d hoped to quickly speak with the landlord in the office for a moment about the state of his shower, which was refusing to sputter out more than a few drops of water on a regular basis. He would have fared better in the rain of the alleyway, but even the sky had refused indulge him. Instead of meeting the landlord, however, he was met face to chest with his muse, sending him stumbling back and his portfolio scattering along the ground. He smothered a yelp, immediately dropping to collect the scattered collection of sketches and pieces of his neighbor; his face flaming instantly to match the sunlit copper of his hair. It only made him even more frantic as the man bent low to help.

“Oh, no−” He snatched a piece from the pianist, stuffing it into his portfolio. “Sorry. Thank you, but I’ve got it.”

He hurriedly gathered his pieces, embarrassed beyond belief. He was pretty sure none of the sketches he’d dropped had been facing up long enough for the man to see them, but all the same he could feel the man’s questioning gaze on his back as he made a quick getaway. He was still embarrassed when he stumbled into his meeting, just a few minutes late, with his pieces an unprofessional mess in his portfolio.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t Axel who noticed the stray sketch of blue and gold that lay forgotten along the sidewalk, caught up in a stray patch of grass.

Luckily for him, it didn’t seem like his unprofessional blunder had left any wrong impression on the museum director or his curator – in fact, it hadn’t seemed to matter at all. The two board members had poured over his pieces with the fervor of children with their favorite game, particularly and embarrassingly impressed with the sheer magnitude of his most recent obsession. They had instantaneously offered him an exhibit, with the stipulation that at least one of the pieces showcase the stark, beautiful young man that had influenced his creativity so perfectly.

Axel was quick to agree. Surely he could at least do that – a few times over – in multiple lightings and angles, possibly also in the shower – _and_ be paid for it… He wasn’t seeing a downside to this arrangement at all.

For weeks he spent his time buried among his sketchbooks and canvases, his studio an artistic warzone with the alley-facing window letting in a steady stream of beautiful, unfaltering music. It seemed that Axel’s neighbor was just as pleased as he was, and together they each made their own world, borrowing notes and colors from each other’s passionate musings.

Days passed until finally, it was time to present his artwork to the whole of Radiant Garden, for the people to judge and hopefully enjoy. He managed to fill his whole exhibit of about twenty pieces with his strongest work, fueled with music and rhythm he’d never thought to incorporate into a visual sense. If he ever managed to work up the courage to face his beautiful neighbor, he’d thank him for teaching him things it seemed only a musician could.

Deadlines always came quickly for Axel, and this exhibition in particular was no different. His mind focused on one thing for seemingly days, where he forgot to eat and sleep in lieu of power-napping while in the shower, before swiftly returning to his creations. He found it oddly refreshing to be completely prepared for his exhibit a day before the deadline, and sleeping for a solid sixteen hours truly helped him accomplish that. With the museum’s help he staged his pieces and paintings appropriately in the exhibit hall, though he did strategically place the piece of his muse somewhat away from the main attraction, so as not to highlight his wicked obsession. Now all that was left was to simply count down the hours until the doors of the museum would be flung wide open.

As expected, the opening night was a wonderful success. The museum gracefully received a multitude of guests, many of which were regular art enthusiasts, but there were also a lot of new faces that Axel’s work had inspired to attend. A few of his friends stopped by to tease him about useless things, but also to offer their congratulations; his friend Demyx complaining about the painting of the local river in particular. He claimed that water should dance more across the canvas or some other bull like that, which Axel ended up listening to with a grain of salt. With the many compliments and praise he’d received tonight, and his dashingly attractive business suit making him feel like a million bucks, nothing could bring Axel’s mood down.

Except perhaps the sight of a blue haired man wearing a nicely striped sweater with accentuating khakis, standing tall and silent in the warm light of the studio’s ambiance. As usual, he wore his default scowl, his piercing golden eyes seemingly fixated on one thing.

His own portrait.

Axel’s stomach dropped like a stone.

His neighbor glanced at him from out of the corner of his eye, and then calmly, _slowly,_ crooked a finger in his direction. The artist’s hands had never once been so unsteady as they were in that moment, so he stuffed them away into his suit’s pockets, halfway ready to bolt out of the room while also intrigued and captivated by the man who’d claimed his feeble attention span for more than a month and a half now.

The man didn’t say anything as Axel took his place directly to the left, making an effort to seem as if he, too, was interested in his own works. Inside his mind he knew every little detail of this man’s expressions, and the intricate contours of his face. He knew the beat of the man’s heart beneath the layers of oil and canvas, and had memorized the ruthless scars bridging his nose – and yet, somehow, side by side, he knew that his creation fell dangerously short of the real thing. Somehow, in all of his musings, he’d perhaps adopted too harsh of a stroke, the man beside him didn’t seem half as rigid, or as angry, as Axel had assumed.

The blue-haired man lightly gripped his shoulder. There was a soft rustling as Axel looked down to accept a sketch that had escaped him weeks before. He coughed a little to hide his embarrassment, catching an amused amber light in the man’s eyes, even if he wasn’t quite smiling.

“I’ve been meaning to catch you for some time now; I’ve wanted to tell you something.”

His heart beat faster.

“…What?”

The beautiful man finally smiled.

“You haven’t quite got my eyes right. Maybe after this, you and I could have dinner and discuss your short comings in more detail.”

Axel couldn’t help but laugh.

“Gods, _please._ ”


End file.
